Still Waters

Four

The Sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Help lived in an undistinguished three-story house midway between the car park for the Asda supermarket and the road alongside the Forest recreation ground, where the local prostitutes regularly plied their trade.

There but for the grace of God, as Sister Bonaventura used to remark, bustling past. Whether she was referring to whoring or working at the checkout, Sister Teresa and Sister Marguerite were never sure.

All three of them were attached to the order’s outreach program, living in one of the poorer areas of the city and administering as best they could to the unfortunate and the needy, daily going about the Lord’s business without the off-putting and inconvenient trappings of liturgical habits but wearing instead civilian clothes donated by members of the local parish. Plain fare for the most part, but ameliorated by small personal indulgences.

Sister Marguerite, who came out in a painful rash if she wore anything other than silk closest to her skin, purchased her underwear by mail order from a catalog. Sister Bonaventura stuck pretty much to black, which she relieved with scarlet AIDS ribbons and a neat metallic badge denoting Labour Party membership. “Who do you think He would vote for, if He came back down to reclaim His Kingdom on earth?” she would ask when challenged about this. “The Conservatives?”

And Sister Teresa, whose mother had stopped measuring her against the kitchen wall at fourteen when she had reached five foot seven, was forced to make her own arrangements as the kind supply of cast-offs rarely matched her size. Regularly, she would bundle up a pile of pleated skirts and crimplene trouser suits and take them to the Oxfam shop, where she would exchange them for something more fitting.

Today, when Resnick met the sister by the entrance to the radio station where she broadcast charity appeals and dispensed advice, she was wearing a calf-length navy skirt and a plain white blouse with a high collar and broad sleeves. She wore no discernible makeup and her dark hair was pulled back from her face by a length of ribbon.

Recognizing Resnick, she smiled.

“Good program?” he asked.

“Oh, you know. Sometimes when the same people phone in week after week demanding the same answers, you get to wonder. But, no, once in a while I think it may genuinely help and, at least, it makes people aware that we’re here. I’m grateful for the opportunity to do that.” When she smiled again, Resnick noticed, not for the first time, the tiny lines that creased next to the green of her eyes. “It increases our visibility, that’s what Sister Bonaventura says. And she’s the one with the diploma in media studies.”

“You don’t think it makes you a little too visible at times?” After one helpline session during which Sister Teresa had advised a battered wife to go into a refuge, the woman’s husband had been waiting for Teresa and had attacked her in the station’s car park-which had been where Grabianski, unlikely knight errant, had leaped to her rescue.

“It is only radio, Inspector,” Sister Teresa said. “It’s not as if I were making a spectacle of myself on television. People don’t point at me in the street.”

“You’ll not mind being seen with me, then,” Resnick said. “I thought if you had time for a cup of coffee …”

“Were you thinking of going into the market?”

“Why not?”

“Then I’ll have a strawberry milkshake. And pray for forgiveness afterwards.”

The market stalls, selling fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy produce, meat and fish, had once done battle with the elements in the Old Market Square; for years after that they had jostled comfortably together in a covered hall near the now defunct bus station. When one of the city’s railway stations was demolished to make way for a vast new shopping center, the food market moved again, finding space on the upper floor above the ubiquitous Dorothy Perkins, Mothercare, and Gap.

Resnick came here frequently to buy salami and rich cheesecake at the Polish delicatessen, ham off the bone, Jarlsberg and blue Stilton, and to perch on one of the stools around the Italian coffee stall, drinking small cups of strong dark espresso, which the proprietor dispensed with an extravagant flourish.

This particular afternoon Aldo’s appraising eye traveled its politically incorrect way the length and breadth of Sister Teresa’s body, resting finally on the ring which she wore, third finger, left hand.

“Si bella, signora. If you were not married already, I would fall to my knees this moment and propose.”

“I’ll bet you say that to all the nuns,” Teresa said.

Rapidly crossing himself, Aldo withdrew behind the Gaggia machine.

“Jerzy Grabianski,” Resnick began.

“What about him?”

“I wondered if you’d seen anything of him recently.”

A slight frown passed across Teresa’s face.

“It’s not that I mean to pry.”

“Of course.”

“It’s just I thought he might have been in touch.”

“In person, would this be?” Turning her head a little to one side, Teresa smiled.

“Possibly.”

“He’s been here, then? In the city?”

“Possibly.” Resnick’s turn to smile.

“I’ve not heard anything from him since … oh, several months, it would be. A postcard from Slimbridge, the Wildfowl Trust. Birding, I suppose.” She tried her milkshake, drawing it up carefully through a colored straw. Oversweet. “I’ve always thought it was from him, though he didn’t sign it, of course. It was a painting of a blue-winged teal. A rare visitor from America, apparently. He’d seen a pair of them that day, checked them off in his little book, I expect. Quite the collector.”

“Exactly,” Resnick said. And then, setting aside his espresso, “He didn’t mention anything about paintings by any chance?”

They were sitting in the narrow kitchen of the sisters’ house, previously a vicarage and close alongside the community center that had once been a church. If you listened carefully, you could hear the click of pool balls through the wall.

Sister Bonaventura had greeted Resnick with an appraising stare and invited him inside. “Always bringing men home, our Teresa. Likes to think she’s saving their souls.”

Teresa scolded her and hurried upstairs to her room, leaving Sister Bonaventura to play hostess, which she did by thrusting a potato peeler into Resnick’s hand and pointing him at the bag of King Edwards that sat waiting on the counter. By the time Teresa returned, a worn envelope in her hand, the sister had engaged Resnick in a discussion about New Labour and the pernicious spread of Social Democratic policies.

“When I read that Billy Bragg had torn up his party membership card,” she said, “I had to fight hard to restrain myself from doing the same.” She topped and tailed two washed carrots and chopped them into a pot simmering on the stove. “After all the work that young man put into the cause. You remember Red Wedge, Inspector, naturally?”

Resnick allowed that he might, though it was confused in his mind with Arthur Scargill and the miners’ strike. He knew if he got onto that subject with Sister Bonaventura, he would be there long enough not just to share supper, but to wash the pots as well.

“Here,” Teresa said, rescuing him. “Are these what you’re referring to, I wonder?”

These were a pair of photographs, Polaroids, both of the later Dalzeil painting, one clearly showing the surround of Miriam Johnson’s wall. Sister Teresa’s name and address were on the envelope, the postmark too smudged to read.

“When did you get these?” Resnick asked.

“It would have been early May, the seventh or the eighth perhaps.”

“As if you didn’t know,” Sister Bonaventura said.

Teresa ignored her.

Reflected in one of the photographs, Resnick could now see, was the blurred image of the man taking the picture-Jerzy Grabianski at work. Resnick remembered the camera they had discovered in his bag.

“Why are you so interested in him?” Teresa asked. “I mean, why now?”

“Two paintings-this and another by the same artist-they’ve been stolen.”

“And you think Jerry …”

“I think it’s a strong possibility, don’t you? Given his proclivities.”

“As an art lover.”

“As a thief.”

“You didn’t get very far with those potatoes,” Sister Bonaventura remarked.

“You don’t know for certain that it was him?” Teresa said.

Resnick shook his head.

“Of course. If you did there would be no need to be shilly-shallying here with me. You’d have him somewhere under arrest. But since presumably all you have are suspicions, if he had been here and made contact with me that would be-what would you call it? — circumstantial evidence.”

“It might have helped to place him near the scene.”

“Of the crime,” Sister Bonaventura said.

“It would be my duty, then,” Sister Teresa said a touch regretfully, “to help you if I could?”

“What is a crime,” said Sister Bonaventura, “is that these paintings were ever in private hands in the first place. They should be on public view, available to all and sundry. Not just the privileged few.”

“I don’t see our friend Grabianski,” Resnick said, “as some artistic Robin Hood.”

“Don’t you?” Teresa asked.

“Maidens in distress,” Sister Bonaventura said, now peeling the potatoes herself. “A different legend, surely.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got a number for him? Any kind of current address?” asked Resnick.

Sister Teresa said that she did not.

“Ah, well …” With a sigh, Resnick rose to his feet.

“You’re not staying for supper, then?” Sister Bonaventura asked.

“Maybe some other time.”

Teresa escorted him to the door. “Do you need to borrow these?” she asked, glancing down at the envelope by her side. “If they’d be any help …”

“I don’t think so. Not now, at least.” He looked at her handsome face, unflinching green eyes. “I doubt you’ll be getting rid of them, throwing them away.”

When he turned back near the street end, she was still standing in the doorway, a tall, solidly built woman in simple, straightforward clothes. Had she always wanted to become a nun, he wondered, one of those fantasies so beloved of little Catholic girls, one that most of them leave behind with their first period, their first real kiss? Or had something happened in a split second that had changed her life? Like walking into a room and finding yourself face to face with God?

Next time, he thought, crossing toward the Boulevard, he just might ask. Next time. For now there was a colleague he could contact down in the smoke, someone who kept his ear well to the ground. And the secretary of the Polish Club would have connections with his counterparts in Kensington and Balham. Small worlds and where they connected, Grabianski might be found.